The first thing to say is that landing Sansom is quite a coup. Having learned his directorial craft working with Alan Ayckbourn in Scarborough, he took over the Royal and Derngate Northampton from Rupert Goold in 2006. It was a hard act to follow, but Sansom has been a huge success because, like Goold, he thinks big. His particular quality has been to come up – in defiance of the British tradition – with high-concept seasons. In 2009, this led, most famously, to a pairing of Eugene O'Neill's unfamiliar Beyond the Horizon with Tennessee Williams's totally unknown Spring Storm. Played in tandem and cross-cast, Sansom's productions provided one of the best days I've ever spent in a regional theatre; and, quite rightly, the shows duly transferred to the National theatre in 2010.

Sansom will face a tough challenge in Scotland. He will need to get to know the terrain, as well as the writers, directors and actors who make up Scotland's thriving theatre community. He will be taking over at a time when the debate about Scotland's possible independence will be gathering steam. But I'm confident Sansom will be up to the task for several reasons: he's not only a fine director but, as he proved with a recent production of The Bacchae staged in a disused Northampton printing works, he's keen to explore non-theatrical spaces.

My main hope, however, is that he brings to Scotland the same desire to package plays imaginatively that he showed in the east Midlands. In Northampton, The Bacchae was teamed with Blood Wedding and Hedda Gabler in a summer 2012 Festival of Chaos. There must be similar opportunities in Scotland to look for thematic links. How about, for instance, a group of plays on Scottish politics, embracing the work of John McGrath, David Greig and David Harrower? That's off the top of my head, but it's the kind of thinking I'd hope for when Sansom arrives in Salmond country.

The job of running the Edinburgh international festival strikes me, in some ways, as even tougher: partly because we in the UK are much less starved than we used to be of international work, partly because of the media obsession with the Fringe, which tends to steal much of the thunder. But I have one radical thought. During my lifetime, the Edinburgh festival has been run by a large number of Englishmen (George Harewood, John Drummond, Frank Dunlop, Brian McMaster), a Dutchman (Peter Diamand) and an Australian (Jonathan Mills).

Whatever the result of the independence vote in the autumn of 2014, isn't it high time the selection committee chose a native Scot? I'm in no position to name names, but I'm sure there must be a man or woman on the Scottish artistic scene who combines local awareness with an international knowledge of music, drama and art. I'm not advocating the break-up of the union. I'm simply suggesting the Edinburgh festival could be redefined in an exciting way if it were, at long last, in the hands of a Scottish national.